Up until this moment, I had always loved this room. Right at the top of the house you could see across the rooftops with the entire beautiful Georgian city spread out before you. If I craned my neck, on a good day I could see the splendour of Bath Abbey and next to it the beautiful Pump Rooms, made famous by Jane Austen but still just as splendid today as a place for residents and tourists to mingle. And if that wasn’t enough, the majestic stone buildings of the city were framed with lush countryside, the sight of which couldn’t help but make your heart soar. Well, usually, but today as I sat in the room that had once been Harry’s study, I felt nothing but gloom-laden. In this particular moment I hated this room. I felt as though it wasn’t the picture-perfect paradise I always believed it to be, but instead a huge vault, a prison for secrets if you will. As my eyes darted wildly about the room I felt like crying. Harry, my husband of fifty-six years, had suddenly died of a heart attack three weeks ago, but that wasn’t the only reason I was so upset. I wanted to sob my heart out because he had left his affairs in such a flaming mess. There was paperwork strewn across the desk, folders were missing, corrupt files had been found on his desktop and terrifying letters from the tax office, seemingly hidden from me for years, were stuffed in a drawer. For the umpteenth time that morning I wondered why I had been stupid enough to let Harry take charge of everything. I didn’t have a clue about any of this stuff and, at seventy-eight, felt I was a bit long in the tooth to start getting a grasp of it all now.
I threw the sheaf of papers across the room in anger. ‘Why did your father keep such bloody complicated accounts?’
My son, Luke, jumped in surprise. ‘They’re not that complicated, Mum. It’s just a simple in and out accounting system. Though I’ll confess, Dad’s paperwork is a bit lax.’
‘Lax!’ I exclaimed. ‘He told me he was on top of everything, yet there are years’ worth of missing accounts, not to mention letters from the tax office demanding back-payments. I still haven’t found the details of half of our investments. I don’t know if I’m coming or going.’
I pinched the bridge of my nose to stem the tears. It had niggled away at the back of my mind for years that I had nothing to do with any of our finances; I didn’t even know how much the gas and electric bills were. Deep down I had known it was stupid just to let Harry deal with everything. Recently I had suggested I got to grips with our affairs in case something happened to either one of us, but my darling husband had waved my concerns away. Two months later, we were in our favourite café enjoying a coffee with our old friend Phil when Harry had complained of chest pains – an hour later he was dead.
‘Mum, are you all right?’
I felt my only child’s hand rest gently on my shoulder. Just the weight of it there gave me comfort. Lifting my head, I met Luke’s gaze and felt a rush of love for him. He was being so patient with me in the wake of his own grief. The least I could do was try and keep a lid on my emotions.
‘Yes, I’m sorry, love. A bit tired, I think.’ I got to my feet and surveyed the room. At times like this there was only one thing to do and that was to gulp down a glass of wine. Sadly, I knew the fridge was bare, and so the second-best thing would have to do. ‘Tea?’
As Luke nodded, I planted a kiss on top of his head and walked back down the three flights of stairs to the kitchen. Flicking on the kettle, I suddenly felt very weary and old. Sinking into one of the dining room chairs, I gazed out across the garden. It needed work, I realised with a sigh. The lawn needed mowing, the path re-laying, the shrubs tending and the shed a patch repair on its roof. Harry and I were always so busy with the antiques business we had run together, we didn’t have much time to worry about maintenance. Then when Luke had left home, Harry had wondered if this house was too big for us.
‘We’ve got five bedrooms and it’s a listed building,’ he had protested. ‘I know we run an antiques business, but we don’t have to live in an antique as well for the rest of our lives. That’s the trouble with living in a World Heritage site! Most of these other properties around us have all been carved up and turned into flats. Why don’t we do the same and live in one of them? We could make a tidy sum on the investment as well, Lyds.’
The idea had horrified me just as much then as it did now. ‘We bought this house before Luke was born, we can’t convert it into flats.’
‘It’s too big. We don’t need all this space,’ Harry had tried again. ‘We don’t have to leave Bath, but perhaps we could find somewhere smaller? Move out of the centre perhaps?’
‘But we’ve always lived here!’ I had screeched. ‘People come to our house for parties, I may dislike them but we’re famous for it.
‘People will still come even if we live on the other side of town in a two-up, two-down.’ Harry had countered.
‘Over my dead body!’ I had said.
I’d meant it too. It had been me that had found this house a month after we married. Harry and I had been living in a studio flat on the busy main road out of town. The place was riddled with damp and our closest neighbours were a family of rats. To describe it as a dump would be more than generous.
I had been on my way to the auctioneers in town one morning where I worked as a secretary and had seen the house up for sale. I always walked through the Circus, it was a bit out of my way, but I loved to pretend I was living in a Jane Austen novel for a few minutes.
Taking my usual route, I found myself peering up at the houses as I always did, picturing who had lived here over the years. Steeped with history, these Georgian houses could tell a story. Then, about halfway down, I saw what I thought had to be a mirage. There, right in front of me, was a man attaching a ‘for sale’ sign to the iron railings outside. I mentally pinched myself. Houses around here never came up on the market!
A quick call to the estate agent when I arrived at work told me it wasn’t a joke, but the place did need renovating which was why the monthly mortgage payments wouldn’t be much more than the rent we paid on the studio flat. I wasn’t put off and made Harry come with me to see it later that day. As we walked through the hallway, I had already moved in. The place was beautiful, filled with original features such as the foot scraper outside to wipe the muck off your shoes. While Harry roamed from room to room moaning about the cost of rewiring, re-plastering, rebuilding and the difficulties associated with listed buildings, I cut across my husband and put an offer in to the estate agent there and then.
It didn’t matter to me that women couldn’t get mortgages on their own without the approval of their husbands; I knew this house was the right one for us and I was determined to make our dreams come true.
The kettle boiling jolted me back to reality and I poured the water into the teapot, enjoying the motion of stirring the leaves before I put the lid on. I knew some people thought tea leaves were old fashioned, but my father had always taught me that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing right. I very much counted a cup of tea as something worth doing right.
‘Mum, have you got a minute?’ Luke asked, bursting into the kitchen.
I turned around and saw his face was a picture of worry. ‘Are you all right?’
Luke leaned against the architrave and said nothing. I watched him curiously. He seemed to be struggling with what to say. He might have just turned forty-eight in December, but to me he would always be my little boy. Pouring the tea, I kept quiet. Luke was never very good when he was rushed, just like his father. I would have to simply wait until he was ready to tell me whatever it was that was wrong and judging by the desperate look in his eyes I didn’t think it would be very long.
‘It’s…’ he began.
‘Go on,’ I coaxed.
‘There’s a bit of a problem with Dad’s affairs.’
I stood against the worktop and took a sip of tea. ‘Well, I know that. How we’ll pay off that tax bill I don’t know. I suppose I’ll have to dip into our savings.’
‘The thing is, Mum… there aren’t any savings,’ Luke said nervously.
‘Of course there are!’ I said, laughing. ‘Your father may not have been a very good administrator, but he knew a sound investment. That’s why we’ve still got an attic full of stock for the online business. Your father was very savvy, I’m sure whatever he chose to invest our money in will be worth a small fortune.’
Luke shot me a plaintive glance. ‘I don’t quite know how to say this, Mum, but I think savvy is the last thing Dad was. The online business hasn’t traded in years. There are no investments or savings. They’re gone.’
I stared at him. He must have got it wrong. But the sparkling blue eyes that he got from me, along with my blonde hair and sloping Roman nose, told me there had been no mistake. If anyone was savvy, it had always been Luke. He made his living from banking.
Taking the chair opposite him, I took a deep breath and steeled myself. ‘I’m sorry, Luke, but I don’t quite understand what you’re telling me. Before your father died, he and I had a frank chat about money and he told me that if anything should happen to either one of us we were more than adequately provided for.’
‘I think Dad might have been telling fibs, Mum,’ Luke replied, sitting down and pushing a file towards me.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, flipping through the contents of the A4 buff folder. Luke said nothing as I pulled out statements of accounts all with a closing balance of zero, along with letters from insurance companies confirming the cancellation of our life insurance.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said shutting the folder and passing it back across to Luke. ‘What does all this mean?’
Luke closed his eyes and breathed heavily. ‘It means that Dad cashed everything in. From what I’ve been able to look through so far I think he was using your investments and savings to fund your lifestyles.’
I felt as if I were on a rollercoaster – and I definitely wanted to get off. I couldn’t think straight, this couldn’t be happening. How could Harry have done something so stupid without talking to me?
‘So you’re telling me everything’s gone?’ I asked with finality.
Luke nodded. ‘He cashed everything in over the past few years.’
I shook my head in disbelief. There had to be an alternative. ‘But what about the online business? Why do you say it hasn’t traded in years? Harry always told me how well that was doing.’
Luke grimaced. ‘It seems Dad shut that down two years ago. It was costing more to run than it made.’
I gasped. Only last month we’d had a conversation about going back to the souks in Marrakech to source more stock just as we had when we had run the shop near the park.
‘Why did he lie to me?’ I whispered in horror.
Luke reached out and laid his hand on top of mine. ‘I think he wanted to protect you, Mum.’
‘But he must have known this ridiculous plan couldn’t last,’ I wailed. ‘He should have talked to me.’
Luke shrugged. ‘Downsizing would have been your best option. Dad knew you didn’t want to do that. He knew how much this house meant to you.’
Guilt gnawed away at me. Luke was right. Harry was well aware of how much I adored this house. He must have been worrying himself sick if he had been juggling so much and keeping so many secrets. Even so, I was his wife; we had built a life together.
‘There is some good news. There’s enough to pay the tax bill,’ Luke said gently.
‘Oh, let’s throw a party to celebrate,’ I said sarcastically.
‘And there are other things you could do.’ Luke said, ignoring my caustic tone.
I felt a flash of hope. ‘Like?’
‘You could sell up and come and live with me and Hannah in New York.’
I let out an involuntary shudder. I didn’t like Luke and his wife Hannah living in such a big city. I adored travelling but never liked the bustling concrete jungles where it was noisy twenty-four hours a day. They had been living there for four years, moving when Hannah got a new job as a fashion buyer for some very impressive company and of course Luke went with her. He had no problem getting a job, not with his qualifications, and they now lived a wonderful life on the Upper East Side, which Harry always insisted meant they were doing very well for themselves.
Harry and I had visited regularly at first but over the past few years Luke and Hannah had come to us several times a year as I was beginning to find air travel tiresome. All those security checks and then of course there was the jet lag. The last time we had gone over to visit I had felt dreadful and they could tell the journey had taken its toll on me. Naturally, I missed Luke and I adored Hannah, but whenever we visited I always looked forward to getting back to my home in Bath. New York wasn’t me, and even allowing for the air travel and the jet lag which I knew I would eventually get over, I felt far too old to make a move like that.
‘Okay.’ Luke grinned, seeing my reaction. ‘You could downsize on your own then.’
‘After the lengths your father went to to ensure I could keep this house, you must be joking,’ I said stubbornly.
‘All right, you could start up the antiques business online yourself,’ Luke suggested.
I barked with laughter. ‘Oh, sweetheart, I can barely send an email! Don’t you remember how I accidentally copied all your colleagues into a message I sent Hannah with photos of you as a baby?’
Now it was Luke’s turn to shudder. ‘Okay, how about a lodger?’
I opened my mouth ready to protest, but Luke held up a hand to silence me. ‘Just hear me out, okay?’
Nodding, I closed my mouth, already disliking the direction of this conversation.
‘This house is huge, you could rent out one of the rooms and never see anyone for days,’ he began.
‘But I don’t want strangers around me. You remember those parties I always hosted for your father’s sake? To be honest, I could never wait to see the back of everyone!’
Luke laughed before his face turned sombre. ‘I also think it might be a good idea for you to have someone with you. Think about it, Mum. Dad did everything around here, you don’t even drive! And you’re only short, you’ll never reach the high shelves in the kitchen without me or Dad around. Surely you don’t want to live alone?’
With a start, I realised I hadn’t given the idea of living on my own much thought. It was true I was five-foot-nothing, and had always been a passenger rather than driver. But I thought I’d coped rather well. Yet the moment Harry passed away, Luke had stepped on a plane and had been by my side ever since. I knew it was stupid but I had sort of assumed Luke would never go home.
‘I’ve got to get back to Hannah and the bump at some point,’ Luke reminded me gently. ‘I can’t leave them, and you won’t come with me.’
Tears felt dangerously close as I took in my new reality. How in the space of a month had I lost my husband, my future, my lifestyle and now my sense of self? I took another glance around the kitchen, the memories of the last fifty years flooding back.
When we’d moved into this house, I had been fearless, believing there was nothing I couldn’t do. But slowly, over time, that girl had gone, replaced by a woman who let her husband take care of everything. I got to my feet. What lay ahead was terrifying but if I was going to survive, I needed to see if I could find that girl again.